NEWS ITEM: Boston Bruins fire head coach Robbie Ftorek.

As if that’s news around here. It seems that every couple of years the Bruins change coaches. We had speculated in this column a few weeks back about the possibility of Ftorek being let go before the season ended, but then a week ago General Manager Mike O’Connell was quoted in the Boston Globe as having said that the second-year coach "had weathered the storm," and that the team "was prepared to go with him for the rest of the season." Then the hatchet came down on Ftorek and assistant coach Jim Hughes with just nine games remaining in the regular season, and all bets were off.

Granted, Ftorek is not unaccustomed to losing his job late in a season. In 2000 the New Jersey Devils let the Needham, Mass. native go with just eight games to play in the season, and the players got the message loud and clear enough that they went on to win the Stanley Cup 10 weeks later. On the date of that firing, Ftorek had compiled a two-year record of 88-49-19 in the Jersey swamplands — and the Devils had the best record in the Eastern Conference. Yes, the Devils had dropped 10 of 16 contests leading up to his dismissal, but management apparently believed that the team was in the midst of no ordinary slump. Hence, the change was made, and it obviously worked out well for the franchise and its fans.

For Ftorek, though, Wednesday’s firing by the Bruins’ brass, while no less surprising, was also no less fair. Was it that long ago that he led a flawed team to the top of the rough ’n’ tumble Eastern Conference? No, it was just last year. Was it that long ago that Boston won 19 and lost just four of its first 27 games out of the chute? Nope, it was just last fall. And really, is a current record of 33-28-8-4 all that bad? If you’re comparing it to the way the team started the current campaign, yes. But in the scheme of things, Boston’s record is still currently better than 15 of the NHL’s 30 teams, and I don’t see those non-playoff teams axing their coaches in the final fortnight of the season.

Admittedly, the team’s performances in December and January were god-awful at times, and its 2-1 loss in Phoenix to kick off a three-game West Coast trip was, to put it kindly, lackluster. The fact that Ftorek significantly experimented with his lines against the Coyotes and in recent days threw a couple of defensemen into forward positions did not help his cause in the front offices on Causeway Street, especially with the way the team has been hurting defensively.

Yet Ftorek has been a winner nearly everywhere he’s gone. Check out these records:

New Haven (AHL) 36-37-7 (.494)

1986-87 New Haven (AHL) 44-25-11 (.619)

1987-88 New Haven (AHL) 16-8-3 (.667)

Los Angeles (NHL) 23-25-4 (.481)

1988-89 Los Angeles (NHL) 42-31-7 (.569)

1989-90 Halifax (AHL) 25-19-4 (.563)

1992-93 Utica (AHL) 33-36-11 (.481)

1993-94 Albany (AHL) 38-34-8 (.525)

1994-95 Albany (AHL) 46-17-17 (.681)

1995-96 Albany (AHL) 54-19-17 (.719)

1998-99 New Jersey (NHL) 47-24-11 (.640)

1999-00 New Jersey (NHL) 41-25-8 (.608)

2001-02 Boston (NHL) 43-33-6 (.616)

2002-03 Boston (NHL) 33-28-8 (.536)

If Ftorek got a raw deal, he is one in a long line of recent Bruins coaches who could make the same claim. The organization has now had a remarkable 12 coaches in the past 24 seasons, and since 1985, when Gerry Cheevers was replaced as head coach, the Celtics have had six head coaches, the Patriots have had six, and the Red Sox have had seven managers. The Bruins are far and away the most impatient club in hockey when it comes to changing sheriffs, and while it seems they never have a boatload of cash to pay their top players come free-agency time, they apparently have enough on hand to pay off dismissed coaches who still have time remaining on their contracts (Ftorek was heading into his option year as part of a three-year deal signed in May of 2002).

For some reason, the Bruins, in the throes of a 32-year Cup-less streak, are not willing to allow their head coaches to fall into bad habits, or losing streaks. Of the 17 Boston head coaches since Milt Schmidt (who guided the team in the mid-’60s prior to the arrival of Bobby Orr), 15 have compiled a winning record at the helm. Yet all of them were replaced, and a good many of them fired in spite of the fact that they collected more wins than losses behind the bench. It’s bad enough when your team wins just five championships over a 44-year period — when there are only six teams in the entire league — and zero Cups in the last 31, but when you’re zapping coaches that have established success with the team, something is very wrong indeed.

Just ask former Bruins coaches (winning percentage behind the Bruins bench in parentheses) Bep Guidolin (.736), Don Cherry (.657), Fred Creighton (.637), Cheevers (.604), Butch Goring (.522), Rick Bowness (.525), Brian Sutter (.609), Pat Burns (.508), or Mike Keenan (.446, going 33-34-7 without the benefit of coaching for an entire season), all of whom did adequate jobs as Bruins head coaches but were summarily canned when management’s fickle finger of fate pointed them in the direction of the exits.

The idea of firing coaches with winning records is not a habit only the B’s employ. Red Sox fans certainly remember the controversial firings of recent managers Joe Morgan (305-258 career record), Kevin Kennedy (171-135), and Jimy Williams (414-352), but the Sox don’t do it with the maddening regularity that the Bruins do.

O’Connell told me in an interview a few years back that when the team was in the process of dismissing Burns, that he, the GM, briefly considered taking over as head coach.

Well, now he’s gone and done it, and will take over the team for its remaining nine games, five of which are on the road. Barring a collapse of monumental proportions and/or a team-wide mutiny, the Bruins should make the playoffs in (at worst) the eighth and final playoff spot. With that accomplishment they will be rewarded by facing league-leading Ottawa or New Jersey in the first round of the post-season with a five- or six-game wipeout a more-than-likely possibility. At that point, the search for the Bruins’ 12th head coach since 1985 will begin in earnest, and it will be interesting to see what kind of personality Bruins management will settle on.

Taskmaster? Didn’t work with Sutter, Burns, or Keenan, so who’s to say? Players’ coach? We just waved sayonara to him a few days ago, just as we did with the likes of player-friendly Steve Kasper and Bowness back in the ’90s.

O’Connell brought up Providence coach Mike Sullivan to assist him in his remaining coaching duties, and while Sullivan returned a winning tradition for the Baby B’s this year (going 41-17-9 to grab the second seed in the upcoming AHL playoffs), the 11-year NHL veteran has only coached this one season since his retirement as a player, and if Boston management grows this impatient with established coaches, how long will it wait out the struggles of a 34-year-old minor-league coach who has yet to prove that he’s ready for the Show?

This has no doubt been an odd season for the Boston Bruins franchise, as it got off to one of its best starts in club history, went through one of the most harrowing slumps almost immediately thereafter, and now faces significant questions (not the least of which are the free-agent situations of forwards Brian Rolston and Sergei Samsonov) as it heads for the playoffs and beyond.

The first glimpse of the new-look Bruins will be at San Jose Friday night and LA on Saturday, followed by a homecoming of sorts at the FleetCenter on Monday, with the debuting Ice Girls at the ready.

Indeed, March Madness has indeed once again taken hold in our fair city, but for local hockey fans, the madness that has enveloped them has nothing to do with hoops.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com